


The Art of Not Panicking

by ProbablyBeatrice



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Genre: BBC, Fluff, I should get to doing them properly, In which I make up an alien species for DRAMA, Other, Ship is only implied so sorry if you came here searching for like proper stuff, what even are these tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 09:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17785202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyBeatrice/pseuds/ProbablyBeatrice
Summary: This was certainly not how Arthur had wanted to spend his weekend.





	The Art of Not Panicking

**Author's Note:**

> So, I know that the Hitchhiker’s Guide fandom is probably very dead, but I think that it’s just a really neat story and I love the characters, so here is my little contribution to the fandom, especially in time for Valentine’s Day! This story was proof-read by the wonderful @writing-orpheus (on Tumblr), so thank you to them!  
> I kind of want to make this a little series because I want to write Trillian in but didn't have the time...

 

  This was certainly not how Arthur had wanted to spend his weekend.

   Then again, things rarely happened as he wanted them to. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure why he was surprised; being submerged in a rather unsafe and small-looking class cage in one of the many salty oceans of the planet Calmaro was one of the least exciting things that had happened all week.

   It was just, he thought rather despondently, that he had thought that today would entail a nice, calm picnic on some nice, calm planet, with nice, calm sandwiches (“You know the ones, Ford - the ones with the cucumber in”) and, if all went even vaguely well, a nice, calm cup of tea. The universe, however, seemed to take great pleasure in throwing what Arthur wanted into the nearest bin and marching him swiftly onward to whichever life-threatening situation it thought would be most entertaining. Not, of course, that he was aware of the universe being sentient, but you never really could tell.

   He stared miserably out at the vast expanse of sea, stretching out before him and Ford, who was looking at it with a sort of awe-struck wonder that indicated that he had suddenly had an idea. Arthur rarely enjoyed Ford’s ideas, per se, as they always seemed to involve death, and danger, and a lack of a hot bath, bed, and food that didn’t make him want to throw up.

   “You’ve got that look in your eye,” he commented nervously, fiddling with the hem of his tattered tartan dressing gown - he could easily get a new one, but this was /his/, a reminder of the home that he had had before... all of this.

   Ford hummed.

   “Why,” Arthur continued, “you felt the need to bring me to a sea-planet in a small capsule with you just to write about it for The Guide, I don’t understand. You could just as easily do this by yourself.”

   Ford glanced at him, surprised, as though such a thing was impossible to think, let alone act upon, before shrugging and turning back to the ocean. A few dolphins with five eyes frolicked in the foam. Ford noted them down.

   “I like the company,” he told Arthur finally.

   “Well, you could have at least been honest with me!” Arthur retorted.

   “If I had told you where we were really going,” Ford replied, “then you wouldn’t have come.”

   That logic was rather difficult to argue with, but Arthur tried anyway.

   “Still,” he blustered, “I wasn’t really expecting that I was going to end up on some planet with mutant squid things, and not-”

   “Arthur,” a warning voice cut through. He continued.

   “-not a peaceful little village on a planet with, oh, I don’t know, hills. And trees. And-”

   “Arthur, it may have escaped your focus, but there is one of those ‘mutant squid things’ coming towards us right now-”

   “-and trickling streams and-”

   “Arthur!”

   He was suddenly aware of Ford seizing his shoulders and turning him right around in the opposite direction. He was about to protest - to make some comment about how he could move himself perfectly well, thank you, and if Ford could let go then that would be wonderful - when he saw a giant, glassy, dark eye staring directly at him. The eye itself was about the size of a small car, or would have been comparable if there had been cars on this planet. He gave a small “Oh” and jumped back.

   “See, if you had listened to what I was trying to tell you, then you would have known that this Calmaroid was outside of the zarking box!” Ford exclaimed, pulling his friend back to look at it. His keen eyes were fixed on the creature. “You don’t get them anywhere else - they’re often called Space Squid,” he told Arthur eagerly. “They can move out of water quite easily.”

   “Thanks,” Arthur sniped, “that really makes me feel a lot safer.”

   Ford, oblivious to the sardonic tone, cast him a rather surprised look, as though astounded that Arthur wasn’t scared by this, or complaining about how Ford had dragged him into this mess and had better jolly well get them out of it. “Really?”

   “No, not really,” the other man replied snappily. “I’m not a huge fan of the idea that this... thing could chase us out of this... wherever.”

   “Wonderful use of words, there. Your Earth education is truly breathtaking,” Ford commented absently, still transfixed by the Calmaroid. It blinked. He blinked back.

   “You must have enough for the Guide entry now,” Arthur remarked, a sort of desperate hopefulness creeping into his tone. “Can we possibly... go?”

   Ford nodded, finally satisfied by whatever research he had come out here to do. The Calmaroid, of course, could use a little glorifying - perhaps swarms of them at a time, rather than just one - and he would try to describe the sea as ‘azure’ rather than ‘sort of a muddy blue’.

   He turned back to face Arthur directly, giving him a smile. “Yeah, I’ve got everything that I need. Ready to head up to the Heart of Gold?”

   “What, back up to Zaphod making jokes out of life, the universe and all humans?” Arthur replied bitterly, though there was a hint of a joke in his voice. Despite everything, the Heart Of Gold was as good of a ‘home’ as he could wish for; at least there he had Ford, and Trillian. At least he wasn’t the last surviving human in the universe.

   Ford sighed - he was never good at comforting people, and hadn’t had to do it much before the whole incident with the Vogons. “Look, Arthur, I’m sorry about your planet. But there’s no one I would rather have saved from being vaporised to make way for an inter-galactic bypass. I mean it.”

   The glass-like box that they were in shook. Ford tore his gaze away from Arthur’s to look at what had caused the disturbance, finding an abundance of Calmaroids - a fleet? A squadron? Whatever the collective noun was, there were a lot of them. He felt the urge to swear. “Belgium.”

   “On a scale of one to ten,” Arthur began tentatively, “how likely are these Space Squid to try to kill us?”

   “If the Guide is anything to go by...”

   “Screw the sodding Guide, Ford, just tell me what you see in front of you!”

   “I’d say... an eight?”

 

* * *

 

 

_Here is what The Guide has to say on Calmaroids:_

_No one particularly knows, or cares, where they come from or what they are, because of the fact that Calmaro is not a popular holiday destination due to it being 98.7% water. Given their size, they’re probably not to be trifled with, but no one with any sense of self-worth or common sense has ever encountered one and felt need to tell whatever tale they left with. It is rumoured that they are the result of scientific experiments once held on Calmaro that resulted in children being turned into gigantic giant squid, but anyone who believes this is either a conspiracy theorist, heavily misguided, lying, or will believe you when you tell them that the word ‘gullible’ is written on the ceiling._

 

* * *

 

 

  “An eight?” Arthur asked incredulously, beginning to like this little field trip less and less with each passing second. His stomach sank, and he felt as though he could almost see it descend into the depths of the planet’s seas, along with his spirits and his will to exist in the same vague vicinity as both Ford Prefect and these Space Squid.

  “Oh, don’t worry, they’re probably quite harmless-“ Ford was cut off when two of the Calmaroids grabbed the box and began almost throwing it to each other with their tentacles. Arthur gave a startled yell and grabbed onto the first thing that he could reach, which happened to be Ford’s arm. He swore.

  “There must be some way that you can get us out of this… this… hellish game of piggy in the middle!” he declared, looking at Ford with a sort of desperate confidence often found in the eyes of people in a life-threatening situation, or under the throes of a particularly strong (or badly mixed, as on many planets) Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.

  Ford gave a smile. “Your faith in me is flattering, but completely unfounded,” he replied in an unnaturally assured tone for someone in his situation. “At this point, we need to hope that, for a start off, this thing doesn’t break – and I wouldn’t put my trust in it, given the miniscule price that it was sold to us at – and someone on the Heart of Gold has enough common sense and technological ability to get us out of here.”

  Arthur gave an undignified huff. One of the many things that he didn’t like (listed at fifteenth, far below ‘lack of tea’ and number one and ‘destruction of all other human life-forms’ at number eight) was being treated as though he was helpless, even though, as one of only two surviving humans in a vast, expansive galaxy that he seemed to explore by blundering from one disaster to the other, he really was.

  More Calmaroids were joining in now, cheerfully banding together to form a larger game. The glass-like box creaked under the pressure of the water and being hit around by gigantic giant squid, and even Ford, with his cock-sure attitude and belief that this would turn out alright if, somehow, neither of them panicked. Arthur, meanwhile, had finally gathered up the courage to say something.

  “Ford,” he began, turning to address the other man, “if these are our last few minutes – seconds, maybe – on Earth, I want you to know something.”

  “Yes?” Ford replied, heart in his throat; though whether this was from the increasingly dizzying spins that the box was being thrown in or what Arthur may have been about to say, he couldn’t really tell.

  “I want you to know,” Arthur continued, “that is, I would like you to realise…” He took a deep breath. “If I die today then I will not have had a single cup of tea in five years. And I’m not sure if I can die knowing that.”

  Ford burst out into uncontrollable laughter, earning a glare from Arthur, who proceeded to proclaim that such things weren’t funny, and he would be damned if he died here without a good cup of Earl Grey clasped in his hand.

  The next thing that either of them knew, they were back in the Heart of Gold, Zaphod standing over them with amusement clear on both of his faces. The box had not been beamed up with them, and both Ford and Arthur now sat on the floor, Ford still laughing slightly, and clasping Arthur’s shoulder in an attempt to calm both of them down, and Arthur heavily shaken and muttering something about tea. Zaphod, who could rarely be asked to do anything, let alone pay heed to whatever he had just saved his sort-of-cousin and the monkey-man from or ask them if they were alright, shrugged and headed through one of the many, many annoying doors. “It is a pleasure to be able to open for you,” the door told him cheerfully.

  “Sod off,” Arthur told it, finally coming to his senses and looking at Ford in apprehension. “Say, Ford, are you alright? It wasn’t something that I said?”

  Ford shook his head. “No, more a matter of something that I thought, rather hoped, you were going to say, but really didn’t,” he replied, smile still on his face. “Now, come on – I can’t make you tea or anything, but I can at least fix you a drink. I think we’ve earnt it.” He saw the look on Arthur’s face and rolled his eyes. “Unless you’d rather have ‘Not-Tea’?”

 

* * *

 

 

_Emotions, The Guide explains in one of its shorter articles, are complex things and widely considered an inconvenience._  

 

* * *

 

 


End file.
